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Delaware Manufacturing

What the state makes, and how it reaches world markets

Manufacturing Is Delaware's Export Economy

If you want to understand Delaware’s position in global trade, start with the factory floor. Manufacturing drives more than 94% of Delaware’s global goods exports, making it the state’s third-largest traded sector and one of the most direct contributors to economic growth, payroll, and tax revenue. In 2025, Delaware manufacturers exported $5.1 billion in goods, including $1.6 billion in chemical products, the state’s largest export category.

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Today, Delaware is home to approximately 1,170 manufacturing and logistics establishments supporting more than 50,000 jobs, with an average sector salary of $78,402. Manufactured exports alone support an estimated 14,000 Delaware jobs. These are not commodity jobs; Delaware’s manufacturing economy is concentrated in high-value industries such as pharmaceuticals, specialty chemicals, precision instruments, and engineered materials. The result is a sector built around knowledge, innovation, and specialized expertise rather than competing on cost per unit.

Delaware’s competitive advantage is knowledge intensity. And that is precisely where World Trade Center Delaware helps businesses grow, connecting Delaware companies to international markets, opportunities, and partnerships that allow them to compete and succeed on a global scale.

What Delaware Makes

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Transportation and Aerospace Components

Transportation equipment is one of Delaware's largest manufacturing export categories, valued at close to $900 million, spanning aircraft parts, aerospace components and automotive materials. ILC Dover, a world leader in engineered products built from high performance flexible materials, is among the state's most internationally recognized manufacturers.

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Precision Instruments and Measurement

​Navigational, measuring, electromedical and control instruments manufacturing is a top growth sector. Chemical analysis instruments are among Delaware's largest export products by value, anchored by companies such as Agilent Technologies and Siemens Healthineers.

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Chemicals and Advanced Materials

Chemicals are Delaware's largest export category at $1.6 billion in 2025. The state's chemical industry is not a historical artifact. Basic chemical manufacturing and agricultural chemical manufacturing, including pesticides and fertilizers, are both among the fastest growing manufacturing sectors in the state by employment, alongside a deep advanced materials base built around companies including DuPont and Gore.

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Pharmaceuticals and Medicine

​Packaged medicaments are Delaware's largest single export product. Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing also leads the state in manufacturing job growth. The sector connects directly to the biopharmaceutical research and manufacturing base at the STAR Campus, including NIIMBL and the SABRE Center pilot scale facility, giving Delaware an unusual combination of research capacity and production capacity inside a single state.

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Food, Agriculture and Packaging Manufacturing

Poultry processing, food manufacturing and the packaging supply chain that serves it represent the state's highest volume manufacturing activity, concentrated in Kent and Sussex Counties and tightly integrated with Delaware agriculture.

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Metal Fabrication and Industrial Machinery

Structural metals, general purpose machinery, custom fabrication and contract manufacturing form the supply chain layer that lets larger manufacturers operate here. Companies such as Miller Metal Fabrication and M. Davis and Sons represent a homegrown industrial base with design, laser cutting, machining, welding and assembly capability.

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  • Market access. More than 50 million consumers sit within 250 miles of Delaware, the densest consumer market in the United States.
     

  • Port access. Delaware's seaport is a full service deepwater terminal roughly 65 miles from the Atlantic, with the largest dockside cold storage complex in the country and a container terminal expansion under construction at Edgemoor.
     

  • Foreign-Trade Zone No.99. Delaware's FTZ No.99 operates under the Alternative Site Framework, with a service area covering all three Delaware counties. Qualifying businesses within the service area may apply for FTZ designation, which can provide opportunities to defer, reduce , or eliminate certain customs duties on imported goods and components. does this make sense
     

  • Road and rail. Interstate 95 through northern Delaware is among the most heavily traveled corridors in the country, with freight rail service statewide and international air cargo capability nearby.
     

  • Corporate and legal infrastructure. The same incorporation framework, Court of Chancery and trust law that made Delaware the country's corporate domicile apply to manufacturers structuring international joint ventures, licensing arrangements and distribution agreements.
     

  • Redevelopment capacity. The modernized Coastal Zone Act has reopened previously restricted industrial sites for redevelopment, releasing shovel-ready industrial land that had sat unused.

Why Manufacturers Locate Here

How World Trade Center Delaware Works With Manufacturers

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Market Identification and Country Intelligence

We produce bilateral trade intelligence reports, tariff analysis, sector studies and country export and import data. Before a manufacturer commits travel budget and sales capacity to a market, we tell them what the demand actually looks like, what the tariff schedule does to their landed cost, what the certification requirements are, and who the incumbent suppliers already serving that market are.

Buyer and Distributor Introductions

Through more than 300 World Trade Centers in over 100 countries, we ask counterpart centers in target markets to identify qualified buyers, distributors and joint venture partners. That is a request from a peer institution rather than a cold approach from an unknown American supplier, and it opens doors accordingly.

Supply Chain and Sourcing

The network runs in both directions. When a Delaware manufacturer needs an input it cannot source domestically, or needs to qualify a second supplier outside a concentrated region, we use the same counterpart relationships to find and vet options.

Access to Capital and Trade Finance

We connect manufacturers to the Delaware banking network, to micro lending and Women's Business Center resources for smaller operations, and to EXIM Bank for export credit insurance and working capital guarantees. Export financing is frequently the actual constraint on a manufacturer's first international order, not demand.

Manufacturing Resources

State and Economic Development

Manufacturing Support and Workforce

Business Organizations and Advocacy

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